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Germ war victims raise Chinas fury

FRAIL, bent and clinging to her daughter, Jing Lanzhi, 83, cut a sorry figure outside the Tokyo high court last week. She had travelled from China to claim compensation for the almost unimaginable horrors her husband suffered during the second world war. The court gave her nothing.

Lanzhi was one of 10 Chinese seeking justice over one of the darkest chapters of the war — a series of ruthless germ warfare experiments conducted by Unit 731 of the Japanese imperial army that killed as many as a quarter of a million people.

Lanzhi last saw her husband Zhu Ziyang being beaten by Japanese troops while tied to a wooden cross at Unit 731’s compound. Yet the court refused to acknowledge that he died at its hands.

Japan’s rejection of compensation for Lanzhi and her fellow plaintiffs — they asked for about £100,000 each — further soured relations with China, where rallies and marches